


Natsplanation

by paroxferox



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Feminist Natasha, Gen, Language, Nat learns Steve a thing, Silly crackfics, Steve Rogers is from the 40s, Steve tries hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-30
Updated: 2013-12-30
Packaged: 2018-01-06 17:04:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1109345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paroxferox/pseuds/paroxferox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve isn't exactly the most forward-thinking man in the world, and eventually his forties values get on the last nerve of Black Widow, who decides it's time to teach him a thing or two about feminism.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Natsplanation

**Author's Note:**

> This was a very silly fic I wrote as a gift for my girlfriend after the prompt "Nat splains someone a thing. Possibly Steve." It's not intended to be particularly educational or serious, just Black Widow as a feminist icon and Steve as someone who tries hard, bless his heart. It does take place in the same continuity as the rest of my AO3 fics, though.

What Steve knew about Agent Romanov before the New York incident, he could have fit onto one of those tiny yellow adhesive notes everyone at SHIELD seems so fond of using (Dr. Banner calls them ‘post-its,’ and Tony Stark calls them ‘why is this on my monitor, Pepper, you know I don’t like things on my monitor,’ but Steve eventually comes to know them as ‘sticky notes,’ which is what Agent Coulson calls them).

What he learns about Agent Romanov after the New York incident is only marginally more than he knew going in. She’s a SHIELD agent first, an Avenger second. She’s intimately connected with Agent Barton – though how intimately is anyone’s guess. Her code name is Black Widow, for reasons Steve would prefer not to know. Director Fury trusts her implicitly. Those are the facts. The rest of what he learns is speculation, rumor, or fiction: one agent swears she broke a former operative’s leg when he offered to spar with her, another insists that she’s been around since the Cold War, a third claims that SHIELD employs her because Director Fury is afraid of her. That one sounds like it might almost be true, but Steve has read most of the Avengers’ ledgers. Romanov’s is _highly_ redacted, but her employment seems to be because of Hawkeye, rather than anything else. Still, she’s _mysterious_. He suspects she likes it this way.

She’s fast, smart, _deadly_ , and perfectly capable of holding her own with the five men on the team. She once fought Stark to a standstill in the Iron Man suit. She’s a fine sparring partner, possibly one of the best Steve’s ever had. She fights like a man.

It reminds him a little of Peggy.

* * *

When he tells her this one day after a sparring session, she doesn’t take it as well as he thought she would. “So what you’re trying to say,” she says coolly, expression completely unreadable as she tilts her chin up and meets Steve’s eyes, “is that I remind you of your dead girlfriend?” When Steve gapes like a fish, she snorts, tossing her hair a little, and continues. “I’m not going to sleep with you, Captain Rogers.” Steve makes an involuntary noise of horror.

“ _What?_ That’s not what I was trying to say! I was saying – you remind me a lot of her – you both got involved in this big project, you’re both working –”

“Yes. Because all women who work are exactly the same,” Agent Romanov continues, cutting him off smoothly. Steve tries vainly to organize his thoughts in such a way as to _prevent_ another easily-misconstrued pile-up of sentences, but instead he sputters indignantly.

“It was a _compliment!_ I meant it as a _compliment!_ I’m trying to say you’re a strong woman holding your own in a man’s profession!” He knows as soon as the words leave his mouth that it was the wrong thing to say. Agent Romanov takes a slow, deep breath, lips pressing into a thin line, and Steve swears he can feel the temperature in the room drop. He tenses, suddenly ready to hit the mat.

“I don’t think Agent Hill is a man, do you, Rogers?” she asks calmly. Steve starts to speak, but Agent Romanov isn’t done. “Last time I checked, I’m pretty sure SHIELD has one of the most demographically-accurate workplace gender ratios in the _entire United States_. Just because the Avengers Initiative suffers from a distinct lack of affirmative action doesn’t mean I’m somehow an _oddity_ here at SHIELD.” Her voice crackles with barely-contained rage. Whenever Peggy got that look in her eyes, men got punched. Steve’s not too keen on a broken nose. He backs up a little bit. _That_ makes her expression change. The look of vicious hatred becomes an ironic smile. “What, am I scaring you?” she asks. Steve frowns. “Afraid I’m going to get violent, Captain Rogers?” Her voice drips with sarcasm. Steve holds his hands up, palms-out, a pacifying gesture.

“No need to lose your temper –” Yep, that was another bad one. Agent Romanov actually stops, taking a sudden, deep breath as her fists clench convulsively at her sides, and it’s only Agent Barton’s voice from the doorway to the gym that snaps her out of it.

“Nat? I’m getting Indian food. You want to come?”

It’s like a completely different woman has stepped in to take Agent Romanov’s place. Her entire body relaxes, expression turning fond as she glances over her shoulder at him. “Sure, Clint,” she answers, and her tone is soft. “Be right there.” When she looks back at Steve, though, her expression is grim. “Try actually learning something about feminism before we talk again, Captain Rogers,” she says, and though her tone is almost conversational, the look in her eyes is pure venom.

When Steve goes home that night, he turns on his computer and types “feminism” into the Google.

Half an hour later, he types in “affirmative action.”

* * *

The next time they spar, Steve is careful not to mention Peggy. Agent Romanov is violent anyway, meeting most of Steve’s attacks with flawless counters. She throws him twice before he adjusts to her aggressive new fighting style, and by the end of the match, they’re both panting and Steve has sweated through his gym shirt. He has no idea if Agent Romanov’s as tired as him; he assumes she must be, but she fights in her catsuit. It doesn’t betray much of her physical status.

“So,” she says once they’ve both caught their breath, “what did you learn?”

“About feminism?” Steve feels like he’s being overly-careful in asking, but he’d rather make sure he knows what the conversation is _supposed_ to be about, instead of putting his foot in his mouth and getting misinterpreted again. Agent Romanov nods.

“Yeah.”

“Um. I don’t know. I mean…a lot of it seems like it was stuff that happened when I was a baby,” Steve begins, and judging by the look quickly encroaching on Agent Romanov’s face, it was the wrong thing to say. He stumbles onwards. “And then there was more, like a second wave, they called it, in the seventies? And it was about women working?” Was this what he was supposed to be learning? Was there something else? He searches Agent Romanov’s face for an answer, but her expression is still moving closer and closer to what Tony Stark calls her ‘kill all men’ face. He forges onward blindly. “And then a lot of it stopped when women got more equal opportunities to work. And then there’s new feminism that I guess is happening today, but it seemed confusing, so I’m not actually sure what it means.” He finishes quickly, offering Agent Romanov a brief smile, but her expression remains impassive. She scrutinizes him through narrowed eyes for what feels like forever before she speaks.

“Well, for starters, women _don’t_ have equal opportunities or equal pay,” she says. Steve elects to say nothing. It seems to be a good move, because Agent Romanov continues speaking, and she’s not currently punching him. “And we also don’t have the same right to our bodies as men do.”

That confuses Steve. “I don’t – I don’t know what you mean?” he says, and it comes out a question. This is probably good, because the look Agent Romanov gives him is less _kill all men_ and more _you poor idiot_.

“Health Care. Rape. Birth control. Abortion.” The last word makes Steve flinch a little; he doesn’t know much about what the newspapers nowadays call _women’s reproductive issues_ , but he can’t help but be a little uncomfortable at the idea of doctors knowingly performing that _particular_ medical procedure. It just doesn’t seem right. His response causes a miniscule expression change in Agent Romanov. Her lips tighten just a bit. “I don’t care if you don’t like it, Captain Rogers,” she says. “It’s not your place to decide.”

“I wasn’t – I wouldn’t –” Steve feels like he’s drowning, and any attempt to bring his head above water just gets him pushed deeper.

“Good,” Agent Romanov says, and her voice is _vicious_ , “because women have enough old white men trying to make our decisions for us without Steve _fucking_ Rogers throwing his Captain America shield into the fight.”

Steve makes a mental note then and there to never, _ever_ allow Captain America to comment publicly on women’s reproductive issues.

Agent Romanov continues. “Women are still making seventy cents to a man’s dollar. We’re not allowed to fight on the front lines in war zones, and we’re _dramatically_ underrepresented among costumed heroes.” The passion in her voice strikes a chord somewhere deep inside Steve, and he wonders if this was what the inside of Peggy’s head was like, too. It had never occurred to him.

“Okay,” he says. He’s not sure what else to say. But it turns out it’s the wrong thing, as Agent Romanov’s lips tighten again.

“‘Okay.’ _Really?_ That’s all you have to say? ‘Okay?’ I’m trying to explain the past seventy years of institutional oppression and you are _literally_ going to look me in the eye and say ‘ _okay?’_ ” And after just the briefest gulp of air, Steve’s head is forced underwater once again.

“I – I don’t – what should I say, then?” he asks, and Agent Romanov’s cold look turns into a genuine scowl.

“And now you’re _seriously_ going to stand there and act like I’m somehow forcing you to say what I want you to say – really, Rogers? I was kind of expecting more from someone who seemed so eager to adapt to the new America. You’re a fucking joke right now, you know that?” The anger in her voice baffles Steve, who flails his hands helplessly as he tries to figure out where he screwed up.

“I’m sorry!” he says at first, and when Agent Romanov’s expression shows no sign of letting up, he forges onward. “I didn’t know any of this, and I didn’t realize it was something I should know! I’m sorry for everything I said that was unkind or sexist or pissed you off, but I have no idea what’s going on right now, and I’m not sure what to say that’s not going to make me come off the same way everything else I’ve said has! For God’s sake, Agent Romanov, I don’t know what you fucking _want_ from me!” He stops to take a deep breath after the outburst, and then adds in a somewhat softer voice, “Pardon my language.”

Agent Romanov’s expression is peculiar. Anger and annoyance war with something that might almost be amusement. “You’re uncomfortable right now, huh?” she asks. Her voice is cold and ironic, but it shows no trace of the anger it had a moment ago. “You’re worried I’m going to flip out and punch you for saying something you don’t like?” Steve nods, unwilling to say anything else that might piss her off further.

She smiles very slightly. “Welcome to how it feels for a woman living in institutionalized sexism.” She turns and leaves the gym without another word, and Steve has a lot to think about.

When he gets home, he turns on his computer. This time, he Googles (Tony taught him that word, “to Google,” meaning “to look up on the Google”) “feminism and women’s health.”

He goes to bed four hours later, leaving the Web browser and all its tabs open to read the next day.

* * *

The next time they fight, Steve is learning. He knows what Planned Parenthood is, and what services it provides in addition to the abortions it has become infamous for. He knows about the Equal Pay Act, and has begun reading up on America’s policies for maternity and sick leave compared to other developed countries (and he actually brings the sick leave stuff up to Dr. Banner, who rants furiously about the collapse of the American health care system until Tony Stark throws a stress ball at him and tells him to go outside before he turns green and kills them all). He’s still uncomfortable with abortion – particularly once he’s read the Catholic Church’s stance on it – but he knows about Roe v. Wade, and concludes that if the American justice system made the decision, it must have been the right one.

When Agent Romanov uses the word “patriarchy,” he only flinches a little bit, and when she looks at him and snaps, “See, that’s the sexism talking,” as he tries to defend the Department of Defense’s decision to keep women off the front lines for their own safety, he actually stops and thinks about _why_ he thinks women who joined the army of their own volition need to be protected from what it is the army actually _does_.

It seems to satisfy Agent Romanov, who only throws him a few times and doesn’t punch him nearly as hard as she did the last time. And after the session, while they’re both cooling down, she casually remarks that she thinks SHIELD’s shower facilities should be unisex, and Steve manages to only blush a little bit. When he points out that he’s not sure he would trust SHIELD’s men not to be pigs, she gives him an appraising look.

He shrugs, staring at his hands. “With all due respect, Agent,” (never Ma’am, Agent Romanov _despises_ being called Ma’am) “I _was_ in the army. I know what men are like. And sometimes men are pigs. And I’d personally see to it that anyone who _was_ a pig met a swift and painful correction, but I don’t know that I’d trust them around girls.”

“Women,” Agent Romanov corrects automatically, but her tone is level and her expression merely thoughtful. “And a lot of what I’m thinking right now is probably higher level stuff than you’re ready for.”

“That’s a little condescending,” Steve begins, and when her expression gets hard, he sighs. “But I’m sure you have your reasons.”

“You’re in Feminism 101 right now, Steve.” Agent Romanov has slowly taken to calling him by his first name. Steve doesn’t mind; everyone else does already, so if she wants to, that’s fine by him. “Rape culture stuff is graduate level. We’ll stick with the basics for now.” Steve bristles, just a little bit, but he knows she has a point. He’s still working on what she calls his “institutional forties misogyny,” so maybe it _is_ better to stick with what he’s already learned and make baby steps forward.

* * *

Dr. Banner always smiles when Steve corrects himself after saying something sexist. Tony Stark rolls his eyes and calls it pandering. Agent Barton gives him a short, approving nod, and sometimes a thumbs-up when Agent Romanov’s not looking. More than once, he stops Steve from putting his foot in his mouth by frantically gesturing from behind Agent Romanov. Agent Barton wants him to do well. Or possibly he just wants Agent Romanov happy. Steve can never quite tell.

Every night when he goes home, he tries to do some reading. Many of the blogs he finds make him uncomfortable, but some of the ones he reads early on – one in particular about unpacking knapsacks – remind him that his discomfort comes of having his place of privilege challenged. He tries to remind himself of this when he gets too frustrated, but some nights he still goes to bed defensive and annoyed at what he perceives as an attempt to make him feel guilty.

Agent Romanov calls this derailing. Steve shuts up when she does.

* * *

He finds that sparring with Agent Romanov is a clearer window into her mind than any other method of getting to know her could possibly have been. As he educates himself (because it’s not Agent Romanov’s job to educate him, though she does occasionally deign to do so when he asks her nicely and she’s not already annoyed at him), they talk less about feminism and more about life in general. He learns a few of her interests (languages, apparently, and literature, in addition to feminism) and she tells him what she thinks of the American system of government (it’s a mess, not that the USSR’s was any better, and Russia’s falling apart thanks to that despot Putin). And Steve tries not to get defensive, because for the most part, she’s right about the country being a mess, and when Agent Romanov punches him it’s to remind him to keep his guard up, not because he pissed her off. He’s learning.

During research one night he discovers that Peggy was a founding member of SHIELD, and he can’t help but compare her to Agent Romanov again. But he’s learned enough about Agent Romanov now that he can understand why the initial comparison must have insulted her so much. Peggy made her way in a man’s world by assimilating to the terms of the men around her. Agent Romanov makes her way by forcing the men around her to change their terms to accommodate her. It’s really not the same at all.

* * *

When he tells Agent Romanov his thoughts at their next sparring session, she gives him a hard stare. Then she smiles and says, “You’re starting to work it all out, Steve.”

“I appreciate that, Agent.”

For a moment, she frowns, but it’s a thoughtful expression, not an angry one. A beat later, she smiles at him just slightly. “I think you can probably call me Natasha, if you want to,” she says. Steve takes a moment to do some of his own thinking.

“That’s kind of you,” he says, “but I’m not sure I’m comfortable with it.” So far, the only person he’s on first-name terms with is Tony Stark, because the world is on first-name terms with Tony Stark. Calling Agent Romanov by her first name seems…too intimate, somehow. Too much like Peggy. And Agent Romanov really is nothing like Peggy.

“That’s fine. I’m just letting you know the option’s open if you want to take it.” She – Agent Romanov – Natasha – shrugs, and then smiles.

“You earned it.”


End file.
